


Angels in the Architecture

by ignipes



Category: Torchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-20
Updated: 2006-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-03 01:55:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes she thinks she can still hear them, even after the pendant is gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angels in the Architecture

There is a man standing by the water. Middle-aged, graying hair, suit and tie and sensible shoes, paper coffee cup in hand. He doesn't notice the rain misting on his coat, the wind off the sea, the lunchtime crowd spilling out of the restaurants behind him.

Toshiko watches from a distance, and she wonders: sex, money, food, or music.

One of the above or all of them, she doesn't need to see his face or hear his thoughts to know. For all their mess, for all their racket and activity and pointless scurrying around, people don't think about very much.

-

Her house is dark, filled with quiet noises she has never noticed before. A dripping sink, her neighbor's footsteps on the pavement, a branch scraping the window, cars on the street outside.

Three nights in a row she's awoken expecting the sound of breathing beside her. She is half-convinced she can hear it as long as she keeps her eyes closed, but she gives in and sits up, turns on the light and fumbles for her dressing gown, reassures herself the house is empty.

Filled with food that Mary bought and cigarettes that Mary smoked, clothes that Mary wore draped over chairs and bookshelves, a cold space on the bed that should be warm, a sweet scent she can almost taste on her tongue, a fleeting silver glow that seems to flow from the walls only when she turns her head away, but empty.

-

She feels foolish and naïve, now, thinking of how it had shocked her. Sex and money, lust and greed, hunger and want--

_What did you expect?_ Mary's voice whispers in her mind. _Philosophy and science? Morality and ethics?_

\--one hardly needs to read minds to know what fills people's thoughts.

It's almost reassuring, considering the alternatives, to know that people actually spend most of their time thinking about food.

But the music -- that was a surprise.

-

She catches Jack watching her at odd moments. Regarding her across the table during a meeting, asking an unexpected question and listening intently to her answer, tilting his head to one side and following her as she moves across the Hub.

He doesn't try to hide it, only smiles brilliantly when she stares back, but Tosh can't find the nerve to ask why he's studying her as though she is a particularly fascinating and problematic bit of alien technology.

At first she's worried, careful with her actions and her words, waiting for a formal reprimand that never comes.

Then she's annoyed, and she begins avoiding Jack's gaze and snapping back when he asks something that sounds more like a test than a question.

After several days, however, her annoyance fades, and she grows used to the scrutiny, even begins to find it strangely comforting.

It must be very difficult, she realizes, one evening after everybody else has left and only she and Jack remain hunched over their work. It must be very difficult to be surrounded by employees who cause more problems than they solve.

-

A busy street swarming with cacophonous thoughts, squabbling children--

_Bastard little kids._

\--words of anger, jealousy, excitement, fear, tumbling over each other and filling her mind--

_Things they don't know they're thinking._

\--and beneath it all there was a low, undulating hum of notes, harmony and melody without rhythm, beautiful and soft and nearly drowned in the graceless jumble of petty concerns and leaden burdens.

-

The rain is falling more steadily now. The man at the edge of the water turns, opens an umbrella, and walks away. Toshiko hears nothing as he passes except his shoes on the pavement and rain pattering in puddles. She considers, briefly, following him, stalking him through the streets to discover what wicked plot or impending tragedy he has been contemplating by the water, but she is slow to turn, slow to watch him go, and the compulsion passes.

It is only her imagination, she knows, those fragments of songs that were never songs at all, but the music is the one thing she misses.

The sign outside the TIC is turned to _Open_ when she returns. Toshiko ducks through the doorway, shaking the rainwater from her hair, and closes it soundly behind her.

"Back already?" Ianto is behind the desk, and the beads are swaying as though he's just walked through.

Tosh stops, confused for a moment, then remembers that she had gone for lunch. "Oh. Yes, I--" She forces a smile and a small laugh, ignoring the pang of hunger in her stomach. "Lots of work to do, you know."

Ianto smiles blandly and glances past her shoulder as the hidden door swings open. "Of course. Never a dull moment." He's holding a folder in one hand and a book in the other: _Walking in the Brecon Beacons_.

She used to assume, when she first noticed, that Ianto turned the TIC sign to _Open_ because it amused him to annoy Jack. Nothing more, that it was just a game to let curious American tourists wander in searching for maps and timetables, to wait for somebody down in the Hub to notice and Jack to come up with a scolding lecture about security that was more flirtation than rebuke and never fooled anybody at all.

She used to assume it was simple, silly, innocent.

"Why do you--" She gestures at the door, but the words catch in her throat.

Ianto glances up. "Yes?"

She can scarcely believe she spent so much time assuming she knew what others were thinking.

"Never mind," Tosh says quickly, backing away. "See you later?"

Without waiting for an answer, she turns and hurries into the corridor.

She knows that the Hub is protected from the elements, that the temperature remains constant even with the fountain connecting them to the surface. There are reports, recordings, data that confirm it. But she feels the air change as she walks to the lift, as though the cold and damp are seeping from the bricks around her.

-

The music is gone, of course, crushed with the pendant and the stolen thoughts beneath the heel of her shoe, but there are moments when she's certain she can still hear it.

She turns her head quickly as she rounds a corner, spots a lonely man by the water, catches a smile at the edge of her vision, and she hears echoes like grace notes at the back of her mind, too distant for the words to be understood, gone as quickly as they come.


End file.
